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Western Caspian University № 3, 2020 Scientific Bulletin
113
UOT 57
ENVIRONMENTAL DYNAMICS, POPULATION HISTORY AND
THE TERRACED AGRO-LANDSCAPES OF MOUNTAINOUS
DAGESTAN
Natalia Ryabogina 1,
Idris Idrisov 2,
Eleonora Nasonova 3,
Alexandr Borisov 4
Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science
RAS1,
Institute of Geology, DSC RAS,2, Tyumen Scientific Centre SB RAS3,
Institute of Physico-Chemical and Biological Problems of Soil Science
RAS 4, Russia.
nataly.ryabogina@gmail.com; idris_gun@mail.ru;
eleonora_nasonova@mail.ru; a.v.borisovv@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
The mountainous Dagestan region of the North-Eastern Caucasus has a
unique historical development based in independent cereal domestication and
terraced agriculture. However, there is little to no data on the nature and timing
of environmental changes throughout the settlement history of this region. In
contrast to the much-studied neighboring Caucasus regions, Dagestan remains
mostly unexplored from the standpoint of paleoecology. rf
In 2017, we investigated a detailed radiocarbon-dated 185 cm peat se-
quence from the Shotota swamp located in the mountainous zone of the Da-
gestan. Sediments of the swamp span most of the Holocene (about 9000 years)
from the Neolithic to the Middle Ages, and let us, for the first time, study
Holocene vegetation history of the Eastern Caucasus. The results of the study
showed significant discrepancies in the timing and sequence of the expansion of
tree species in the Holocene in comparison with Transcaucasia and the Western
Caucasus. According to data from the second swamp, Arkida, we found that the
vegetation of the adjacent flat parts of Dagestan was dry and treeless for the last
four thousand years.
With the data obtained on the environmental dynamics of vegetation, we
conducted a coupled analysis of climate dynamics in Dagestan. One of the
phenomena of the ancient development of mountainous Dagestan is the large-
scale terracing of slopes, which from the Middle Ages completely transformed
the territory into agro-landscapes.
Western Caspian University № 3, 2020 Scientific Bulletin
114
Keywords: Eastern Caucasus, pollen, vegetation, climate, settlement his-
tory, terraced agriculture in Dagestan
Palynological data help elucidate the vegetation history and offered a better
understanding of the specific influences on the environment by the ancient hu-
man. This information allows researchers to reconstruct the formation of cultural
landscapes in the past and their spread over time.
Unfortunately, some regions still lack such essential data on the environ-
ment development and climate dynamics. One such region is the mountainous
zone of the Eastern Caucasus, which is now the southern part of the Republic of
Dagestan (Russian Federation). The knowledge gap for this region is particularly
noticeable when contrasted with the rather well explored neighboring regions:
Transcaucasia and the Western and Central Caucasus (Serebryanniy et al., 1980;
Kvavadze et al., 1994; Connor and Kvavadze, 2008; Connor, 2011; Shumi-
lovskikh et al., 2012; Messager et al., 2013, 2017; Leroyer et al., 2016). Hence,
we have an unusual situation where a unique region, one that served as a link
between the advanced civilizations of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, remains
mostly unexplored from the standpoint of paleoecology.
To rectify this problem, we carried out field reconnaissance in mountainous
Dagestan during 2016-2017, identifying several swamps at 1800 to 2400 m in
altitude. One of them (the most promising site) was a swamp near the Shotata
village on the Khunzakh plateau, 1860 m a.s.l. The composition features and
accumulation of peat, the age of the deposits and their pollen assemblages be-
came the basis for the first environmental reconstruction in the North-Eastern
part of Caucasus (Ryabogina et al., 2018).
In order to compare the paleoenvironmental trends in the mountains with
the dynamics on the flat part of Dagestan, we examined pollen in the Arkida peat
sequence located in the valley of the Sulak river, north of Kizilyurt city. The
focus of our research was not only on the history of vegetation and climate but
also on the signs of human activity in the past, including mountain agriculture
and terracing of the slopes.
The Shotota swamp formed where the slope of the Arzhut Range transitions
to the flat parts of the plateau and occupied its lower part between 1830 and 1870
m a.s.l. It is the largest swamp massif in the Eastern Caucasus. From the
northwest of the swamp flows a stream that belongs to the river Andiyskoe Koisu
basin. The flora of this mountain zone is relatively poor, and characterized as a
meadow-highland-xerophytic (Omarova, 2005; Murtazaliev, 2009), with a large
number of endemic species associated with the Mediterranean or the Near East
(Chilikina, Schiffer, 1962). The Khunzakh plateau is almost treeless, with pine
woodlands found only on the northern slopes. Fertile mountain meadow cher-
nozem-like soils developed on the plateau which led to its intensive and almost
Western Caspian University № 3, 2020 Scientific Bulletin
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complete plowing in the past, traces of which remain visible in the form of many
agricultural terraces.
According to seventeen 14C dates, the swamp’s development and under-
lying soil deposits span more than 9 thousand years with bogging of the site star-
ted around ca. 7200 cal BP followed by peat deposition beginning at 6800 cal
BP. According to pollen data, we found that the first appearance of deciduous
forests and later the expansion of coniferous forests in Dagestan were signify-
cantly delayed compared to other regions of the Caucasus. In Dagestan, elm-
hornbeam forests with an admixture of lime, oak and maple appeared around ca.
7300 cal BP and separately from conifers; the delay is about 2000 years in
contrast to the nearest sequences of Transcaucasia (Messager et al., 2017).
An important feature is the absence of beech; its pollen appears in a small
amount late, not earlier than 2400 cal BP, while in Transcaucasia (Nariani:
Messager et al., 2017) and in the central part of Northern Caucasus (Salkanalla:
Serebryanniy et al., 1980), it is well represented already as early as 9000 years
ago probably from the Boreal period of the Holocene.
The spread of coniferous forests was delayed by 3-4 millennia due to the
absence of refugia in this part of the Caucasus. It is likely that the north-eastern
part of the Caucasus repeatedly fell under the more pronounced influence of the
winter Siberian High and lacked moisture. Therefore, during the Holocene in the
mid-mountain zone, there were only sparse forests. Open meadows or steppe
landscapes predominated.
In total, pollen record from the Shotota swamp reveals three basic stages
of environmental change (Ryabogina et al., 2018):
1. A stage of predominantly warm and dry climate, open meadow and steppe
landscapes of 9200-7300 cal BP, which were the backdrop for the origin of
agriculture in this region and its development at the turn of the 7th-6th
millennium BC.
2. A warm and humid climate of 7300-6000 cal BP which accompanied the
appearance of deciduous forests in the Chalcolithic period during which
people abandoned agriculture and left the mountains. Archaeological
information about this time and the population in the Chalcolithic period
of Dagestan has been poorly investigated and it is hard to understand the
relationship between humans and the environment.
3. Several phases of humidification oscillations saw the rise of pine forests
around 5000 cal BP and are associated with the Bronze Age, Early Iron
Age and Middle Ages.
The epochs of Early and Middle Bronze were characterized by a mild
climate and the spread of pine forests in the late 4th millennium BC. They also
coincide with the beginning of the expansion of agricultural settlements of the
Kura-Araxes culture from Transcaucasia in both the mountainous and plain zones
of Dagestan. Cooling and the increase of moisture after 4000 cal BP coincided
Western Caspian University № 3, 2020 Scientific Bulletin
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with a gradual reduction in the number of Late Bronze sites in the mountainous
zone, as the population moved to the foothills and the plain.
Settlements of the Early Iron Age are practically absent in the mountainous
zone, though our data indicates that the pollen of cultivated cereals and weeds
there was widespread. Significant cooling coupled with an increase in moisture
in the Albanian-Sarmatian period led to an active colonization of the plain and
foothills with almost no populations living on the mountains.
According to the pollen data from Arkida swamp, we found that dry steppe
vegetation constantly dominated during the last 4000 years on the flat areas ad-
jacent to the mountains of Dagestan. The most arid adverse conditions including
semi-desert landscapes, were formed here about 3000-3300 cal BP. We did not
find in the Arkida swamp any signs of deciduous or pine forests phases during
the Late and Middle Holocene all the way up to the last century. Therefore, in
dry climatic phases, these areas were unfavourable for agriculture and the lack of
moisture limited the settlement of the lowland territories of Dagestan in certain
periods.
From the Early Middle Ages and onward, a new stage begins for the
colonization of the mountainous zone in a dry and cold climate. From 300 to
1500 AD, the process of settling the mountain zone and agricultural development
of the region intensified. By the Early Middle Ages, the population had peaked
in the mountainous and high-mountainous zones and featured the development
of complex economic models and large-scale terracing of the slopes. Apparently,
people adjusted the first terraces to relief elements and made the bulk of the
terraces after the Bronze Age. At this stage, the expansion of farming areas was
based on the creation of new lands including "arable" terraces. People started to
use unfavourable landscapes including the highest slopes.
Traces of large-scale agricultural land use in the mountainous Dagestan
have been described in historical studies and is clearly visible in satellite imagery.
Their mapping and detailed studies have only recently begun (Borisov et al.
2018). In the Caucasus mountainous zone, as well as other mountains regions,
agriculture development is significantly limited by the lack of arable land.
Mountain residents have found a solution to this problem in creating artificial
arable land - agricultural terraces. Such terraces were actually the only source of
food for the world’s inhabitants for thousands of years everywhere from the
central Andes to the west of the Mediterranean.
However, the study of agricultural terraces is extremely complex, requiring
a multidisciplinary investigation and so far it has been conducted only fragmen-
tarily in a few regions. For the eastern Caucasus, it is important to establish when
terraces were created and how their fertility was maintained throughout this time.
Ancient agricultural terraces not only form the landscape view of the Eas-
tern Caucasus but also play a large role in erosion processes and in soil formation
due to the almost complete interception of surface runoff as the terraced slopes
Western Caspian University № 3, 2020 Scientific Bulletin
117
can consist of tens and even hundreds of individual steps. Accordingly, the in-
tensity of floods in large rivers with terraced valleys decreases. The terraces are
resistant to natural destruction, persist for thousands of years after abandonment
and in extensive flat areas of the mountain zone are intensively overgrown with
trees and shrubs.
It is important to note that the creation of the terraces caused the redis-
tribution by humans of huge volumes of rock. Preliminary calculations show that
in the eastern Caucasus, the volume of rocks transformed into agricultural ter-
races reaches several billion cubic meters which is several times higher than the
volume of annual erosion in the region.
The agricultural practices in the North Caucasus and the impact of climate
on its development require further investigation, and we look forward to recei-
ving new pollen and archaeobotany data from other parts of that region.
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